HADRIAN ELLORY-VAN DEKKER, the director and chief executive of the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery Trust, updates us on the progress of the bid for a new £22m building which will form a new cultural centre for Swindon

THERE is a very big elephant in my room and it would be wrong of me not to acknowledge it.

The location of the new museum and art gallery has been the subject of much recent interest and debate in both print and on social media channels.

We do, of course, need to cherish the past. That goes without saying and is what the Mechanics Institute Trust works so hard to do for the historic railway works, village and surrounding areas. That is what Steam – the Museum of the Great Western Railway tries so hard to achieve in a location which is very much its natural home.

Swindon does also need to look to the future. Every vibrant community requires and deserves a robust and diverse cultural infrastructure that values the past, explores the present and also looks forward.

Why then the town centre and not the Carriage Works as the home for the new museum and art gallery? It isn’t an arbitrary decision. It is because as well as being a world class museum and art gallery – which will showcase Swindon’s amazing cultural assets, tell the story of the town and its people from prehistory to the modern day through the wonderful objects in the museum’s archaeology, natural and social history, and geology collections, allow visitors of all ages to explore science and technology and offer exciting learning and outreach programmes - the siting of a statement new building in the town centre will be a catalyst for regeneration and development both in the centre but also support similar or related projects in other areas of the town.

I have spoken a lot in the past few months and weeks about what has become known in the world of museums and galleries as the Bilbao Effect – the ability of a new cultural institution to both enhance and transform a place, physically but also in terms of its reputation - replicating the positive impact of new arrival like the Turner Contemporary in Margate where, during its first five years, two million additional people have visited the town and spent their money there. This same positive effect has been seen in a number of towns and cities across the United Kingdom and further afield.

This was all brought very much home to me when last weekend I fulfilled a promise and went to Paris, a city I first visited as a backpacker with an Interrail ticket in the mid-1980s. As I did then, I ended up in the area of Les Halles, the home of the Pompidou Centre, a new gallery which had opened just a few years before my first visit and remains as controversial now as it was then.

Les Halles in the 1980s was a troubled place where not only naïve teenagers who had never been abroad before and didn’t speak the language felt ill at ease and unsafe.

The transformation has been amazing. The Pompidou Centre is much the same - you either love it or hate it - but the surrounding area is now a destination where residents and visitors alike sit, chat, meet up and hang out.

As we move toward our grant submission to the Heritage Lottery Fund in November of this year, there will be many more opportunities for us to talk about the aspirations and plans for the new museum and art gallery, both the building and what will be in it.

In order to facilitate this conversation, we will be holding an open meeting on the evening of the April 19 at the Phoenix Theatre at New College. If you are free, please do come along to hear about plans and to ask any questions that you may have.

Feel free also to visit us at the current museum on Bath Road which from next week will increase its opening hours to Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm. We and our very confident gharial (aka Geraldine or Aspley the Crocodile) are very much looking forward to welcoming you.